-Welcome to the show. -Thank you so much. Thank you.
It's so wonderful having you here.
Um, you wrote a book called White Rage,
-which was a New York Times best seller, -Yes.
where you spoke in-depth about how America is dealing
with an issue that it really hasn't dealt with completely,
which is the rage that many white people feel
at what appears to be America changing.
This book is-is...
I guess, based in some way off of that
-and yet is a completely different topic. -Yeah.
One Person, No Vote:
Voter Suppression Destroying Our Democracy.
How bad and how big
do you believe voter suppression actually is?
I think it is massive.
Um, we have had millions of people blocked from voting.
We have had millions purged from the rolls
who had been on the voter rolls.
The purging and the voter suppression
has been so intense that we have Donald Trump
in the White House right now.
That's the power of voter suppression.
(applause)
The-the numbers in the 2016 election,
especially in and around the black vote,
were really interesting.
You saw in key states, in swing states,
where voter turnout dropped from...
it may have been, like, 78,000 people turning out,
and it dropped to below 50,000 or... you know?
You saw drastic drops.
Now, some people have argued that that was because
Hillary Clinton didn't motivate black voters to come out,
but you've looked at the data.
You've analyzed a lot of the information,
and it seems like there's been a systematic effort
-to remove people of color from the voting rolls. -Right.
Well, why-why people of color, though?
And I believe why people of color,
um, besides being just snide
and saying, "Duh, it's been that way for a long time,"
it's because that after the 2008 election
with Barack Obama...
Barack Obama brought 15 million new voters to the polls
with that incredible ground game.
-Wow. -They were overwhelmingly black, Latino, young, poor.
And-and with that,
then the Republican Party
that has moved further and further to the right
and has become more and more white,
um, and-and their policies have become more right-wing,
they c-- they don't have policies that resonate
-with the growing diversity of America. -Right.
And so instead of thinking about how do we reform this party
so that it-it resonates with America,
that our policies are really strong
and talk about benefiting more Americans,
instead, what they decided to do was to suppress the vote.
There are some-- there are some really scary parts of the book
where I-I read about things I never knew before.
I knew about the larger picture of voter suppression
-in certain states, in certain places. -Mm-hmm.
But you read about how so many people
have been stripped of their rights.
Now, the argument the other way
from people like Kris Kobach,
uh, you know, from Donald Trump and his team has been,
"We're protecting democracy.
"That's why we scrub people of voter rolls.
"If they've died, if they no longer respond to mail,
"then why are we keeping om-- keeping them
on the voter rolls?" How do you respond to that?
Yeah, I respond to that because one of the ways
that this works and why it's so effective
is that they're able to use that cover of being reasonable.
"You know, we're just keeping the voter rolls up."
But when you really look at what they're doing
is that those-- the people that they're scrubbing,
they're not scrubbing people who have moved
or who have died, overwhelmingly.
Overwhelmingly, who they're scrubbing
are people who are African-Americans,
people who are young, people who are poor.
And they're doing it by the characteristics.
Um, so they can't say, "Uh, we don't want black people
to vote," because there's still this thing
called the 15th Amendment,
although the Voting Rights Act got gutted by the Supreme Court.
There's still this thing called the 15th Amendment.
So what they do is they go after the characteristics of a people,
societally imposed characteristics.
They go after those things like, um, if you move a lot.
And we know that people move a lot,
particularly if you're poor.
-You don't stay in the same house forever. -Right.
That moving then becomes a-a reason
to-to knock people off the rolls.
They say-- And one of the things that we also know,
characteristics, is that, um, young people, minorities,
they don't-- and students-- they-they don't vote regularly.
So they start knocking people off the rolls
for not voting regularly.
And so they use those characteristics.
And those are the characteristics of people
-who don't overwhelmingly vote for Republicans. -Right.
-Yeah. -Wh-When you-- when you look at the-the numbers
and you look at how impactful this could actually be,
the argument is always met with,
"Yes, but look at how much voter fraud there is."
Now, we talked briefly about this,
but, overwhelmingly,
most Americans believe
that voter fraud is a very definite threat.
Absolutely. And that has been a well-cultivated myth.
Um, it has born...
It was born up out of the 2000 election,
-that horrible election with hanging chads. -Right.
And that myth of massive, rampant voter fraud
coming out of the cities, uh, stealing our elections.
Except when they really went hunting for it,
they couldn't find it.
Um, Justin Levitt, a law professor out of California--
he looked, and he went from 2000 to 2014.
Out of one billion votes,
he was able to identify 31 cases.
31 out of one billion votes of voter impersonation fraud.
When Kris Kobach, the secretary of state that you mentioned,
who helped, um, head up Trump's Election Integrity Commission...
Right, right.
Um, in their report, which was all about
when Trump said, "Five million voters have come in,
and I would have won the popular vote..." I...
-That's a great Trump, by the way. -Thank you. Thank you.
It's not as good as yours.
(applause)
Oh. You know, when he said, you know, he's got five million,
then they went hunting, and they couldn't find it.
I mean, the pages are blank.
When it says "voter fraud," his commission's looking--
blank pages. It's not there.
When Greg Abbott out of Texas is arguing for voter ID,
and Judge Ramos is saying,
"Okay, you've got rampant voter fraud. Where? Where?"
And he's like, "It's rampant."
She's like, "Where? How many?"
"It's a lot, rampant."
"How many?" "Two."
And I'm like, "Is that ramp-ant? (laughs)
(laughter, applause)
The...
The argument I've seen a lot of people parrot
with a lot of confidence is, "It's not suppression.
"What we're doing is making sure
that the integrity of our election is maintained."
And so they say, "We're not purging people,
"or we're not restricting them from voting.
We're just saying that everyone needs a voter ID."
Now, I understand it, but if you were explaining it
-to someone who is genuinely well-intentioned... -Mm-hmm.
...someone who says, "I don't understand,"
why is it so-so hard, or why is it so difficult
for the government to say...?
Why is it so bad for the government to say,
"Everyone should have a voter ID
that is issued by the government or at the DMV."?
Why is that so much to ask?
Okay, so let me just give you a couple of examples
about how that really works.
Because part of, again, the way that it sounds so reasonable,
'cause you need an ID, you know...
-Trump said you need an ID to go buy groceries. -Right.
-I'm like... (laughs) -(laughter)
But as we all know, it doesn't quite work that way.
So, for instance, in Alabama,
Alabama said, "You got to have a government-issued photo ID,"
and then said, "But your public housing ID does not count."
Now, Alabama's a poor state.
They've got lots of public housing.
71% of those on public housing, in public housing
in Alabama are African-American.
For many, that's the only ID they have.
So you automatically wiped away that type
of government-issued photo ID,
'cause public housing is government-issued.
-Right. -Okay.
Then Alabama shut down the Department of Motor Vehicles
in the Black Belt counties.
And so now people were gonna have to go 50 miles
to get a driver's license.
But if you don't drive, how are you gonna go 50 miles?
And you don't have public transportation.
So what you do is you create an obstacle.
-Right. -And then you create an obstacle to the obstacle.
And you make it so difficult for people
who are already working their hardest to make it,
to now be able to just access their basic right to vote.
We see this in state after state.
North Carolina, the Fourth Circuit said:
you have targeted African Americans
with nearly surgical precision.
So these states, they make it sound innocuous--
"Oh, you need an I.D."-- but it's not any I.D.
In Indiana...
you need to have a driver's license
to get a birth certificate.
But to get a birth certificate, you need a driver's license.
-(laughter, groans) -Huh?
That's brilliant.
(laughter)
(applause)
It's genuinely brilliant.
It really is.
-Let's look to the future. -Yes.
-We have elections coming up. -Yes.
You have midterms happening in America.
You also have the presidential election,
-which will be on its way shortly after that. -Mm-hmm.
Is there anything people on the ground can do?
What can people do to protect their vote?
Yes, absolutely. So, there are several things.
Um, one is, you have to register to vote.
And there are organizations that are on the ground
helping people, like, get the identification,
-get the documents they need -Right.
in order to get the identification.
Um, organizations like VoteRiders that are...
doing that work.
Um, also, when you are registered,
check your, um...
the Secretaries of States' voter registration page
to make sure you're registered to vote.
Because they are notorious for purging people off the list
even... well, closely... close to an election.
-Wow. -So you think that you're registered to vote,
you go in to vote, and boom, your name's nowhere there,
-and then you're getting the runaround. -Right.
So that... checking regularly.
I check every week, and then I print off a copy,
so that I've got documentation
that I am actually registered to vote
and that this is my polling place.
I say, I think the other thing that's really important
is to help others so that you're volunteering,
you're, you know, you've got election poll workers,
and you're paying attention to what's happening at the polls
when somebody's getting the runaround.
I think that that is really important as well.
And there are organizations, like the Lawyers' Committee,
-Right. -that's doing that incredible work.
So that's what we can do.
And register.
The deadline is coming up in early October.
Register to vote, because we cannot be part of the solution
if we're just sitting there... and not participating.
-(applause) -We've got to vote.
Thank you so much for being on the show.
Thank you. Thank you.
One Person, No Vote is available now.
Scary and fascinating. Carol Anderson, everybody.